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Product Description
Review
If we are going to create a good, clean, fair food system, we've got to learn how to grow affordable, local food year-round and make a living at it. Eliot Coleman knows more about this than anyone I've met. Here he gives the detailed information needed to make it work. The only way to learn it better would be to follow him around for a few seasons. And he won't let you.--Josh Viertel, President, Slow Food USA
Product Description
Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that's taken hold throughout the UK and north America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine. Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters. Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses. Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous, and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Colemanis own farm. His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders, and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons. A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it ijust canit be done.i
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a great read. It tells the story of how the author started and built up his organic farm to a succesful comercial level over more than 30 years. Lots of insights into how to use polytunnels and portable greenhouses.
What this book is not is a guidebook. It doesn't cover exact how to do x, y or z. If that is what you need (it was what I was actually looking for) then go for 'gardening under plastic' or similar.
What this book is not is a guidebook. It doesn't cover exact how to do x, y or z. If that is what you need (it was what I was actually looking for) then go for 'gardening under plastic' or similar.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Winter Harvest Handbook is an excellent update to Elliot Coleman's previous books. It covers his latest approach to moveable greenhouses and mutirow seeders, and as the title implies covers his recent experiance with the commercial cultivation of vegetables all year round. This book however is more a record of how one man has done it than a how to instuction manuall and is a lot more readable for it. My one reservation is that the section on marketing and making it pay could be stronger. There is no attempt to list profit margins for the different crops and while his grossing $80,000 an acre is very impressive, on 1 1/2 acres with 5 employed in summer and less in winter, what does that leave the farmer?
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The early chapters of the Winter Harvest Handbook are downright entertaining. There's a lot about how Coleman's Four Season Farm has developed its winter harvesting techniques, and some insights into the history of winter harvests that are fascinating.
The book is clearly aimed at the American market. Not only are the temperatures all in Fahrenheit, but there are frequent mentions of USDA climate zones and the fact that winter harvests are (or have been, in the past) far more commonplace in Europe than the US. But there is a nice section on latitude and day length that explains (with reference to polar bears) how winter growing is different in the UK than in the US. In essence, although the Gulf Stream gives us a warmer climate, our higher latitude gives us shorter winter days.
And the length of those days is important, because the two limiting factors to growth in winter are the low temperatures and short days. Once the day length drops under 10 hours, plant growth effectively stops. Coleman's winter harvest technique has three aspects - protected cropping, hardy vegetables and successional sowing - but the timing of sowings is crucial if plants are to be large enough to provide a harvest overwinter, but still young enough to be more hardy.
The next set of chapters has all of the technical information you need to work out a winter harvest schedule of your own. A lot of it is aimed at farm-scale growers; most gardeners won't have the space to implement a movable greenhouse or need mechanical sowing devices. The chapters on marketing and economics are interesting, though, as are the anecdotes about Coleman's customer base that occur throughout the text.
The pests and diseases chapter will make many gardeners howl in frustration - because Coleman doesn't really have these problems. His biggest pests are voles, and he looks on the arrival of aphids as a helpful indication that his growing conditions are not spot-on.
The final chapter is a highly personal statement of Coleman's organic ethics. He supports small-scale, local growers and believes their produce is best for both the planet and consumers. He sees industrial scale `organic' farming as nothing more than greenwash, without the underlying philosophy that makes organic worth something. Its clear that his ideas have a thorough grounding in science, as he spends a lot of time reading through agricultural research to improve and enhance his growing techniques.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book (although I skimmed the highly technical farming information that just isn't relevant on a garden scale). The only thing lacking in this book, from a gardener's perspective, is detailed information about the crops that the farm grows. There is only limited detail here - but there is a lot more on crops in "Four Season Harvest".
The book is clearly aimed at the American market. Not only are the temperatures all in Fahrenheit, but there are frequent mentions of USDA climate zones and the fact that winter harvests are (or have been, in the past) far more commonplace in Europe than the US. But there is a nice section on latitude and day length that explains (with reference to polar bears) how winter growing is different in the UK than in the US. In essence, although the Gulf Stream gives us a warmer climate, our higher latitude gives us shorter winter days.
And the length of those days is important, because the two limiting factors to growth in winter are the low temperatures and short days. Once the day length drops under 10 hours, plant growth effectively stops. Coleman's winter harvest technique has three aspects - protected cropping, hardy vegetables and successional sowing - but the timing of sowings is crucial if plants are to be large enough to provide a harvest overwinter, but still young enough to be more hardy.
The next set of chapters has all of the technical information you need to work out a winter harvest schedule of your own. A lot of it is aimed at farm-scale growers; most gardeners won't have the space to implement a movable greenhouse or need mechanical sowing devices. The chapters on marketing and economics are interesting, though, as are the anecdotes about Coleman's customer base that occur throughout the text.
The pests and diseases chapter will make many gardeners howl in frustration - because Coleman doesn't really have these problems. His biggest pests are voles, and he looks on the arrival of aphids as a helpful indication that his growing conditions are not spot-on.
The final chapter is a highly personal statement of Coleman's organic ethics. He supports small-scale, local growers and believes their produce is best for both the planet and consumers. He sees industrial scale `organic' farming as nothing more than greenwash, without the underlying philosophy that makes organic worth something. Its clear that his ideas have a thorough grounding in science, as he spends a lot of time reading through agricultural research to improve and enhance his growing techniques.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book (although I skimmed the highly technical farming information that just isn't relevant on a garden scale). The only thing lacking in this book, from a gardener's perspective, is detailed information about the crops that the farm grows. There is only limited detail here - but there is a lot more on crops in "Four Season Harvest".
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Present
Bought this as a Christmas present. My brother loved this and reads it all time! Really useful and has a good layout.
:)
:)
Published 4 months ago by Bunny_Girl
Fabulous!
I have been buying gardening/homesteading books for years and this book tops my list of favourites. Clear & easy to understand, the author uses his years of experience in 'winter'... Read more
Published 7 months ago by D. Mcnamara
How to grow all year round
I am a keen grower of fruit and veg, managing to grow quite a lot of fresh produce across the normal growing season. Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2010 by M. C. FitzGerald
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